In a 2004 article originally published in the New York Post, the Manhattan Institute's estimable Heather Mac Donald (also see here) tossed off a couple of paragraphs about illegal immigration that amounted to one of those the-emperor-has-no-clothes statements:

President Bush's proposal to legalize the country's 10 or so million illegal aliens rests on a fallacy: that immigration enforcement has failed to stem the tide of illegal aliens. Therefore, the argument goes, amnesty is the only solution to the illegal-alien crisis.

But immigration enforcement has not failed – it has never been tried. Amnesty, however, has been tried, and it was a clear failure that should not be repeated again. [emphasis added]

Mac Donald's simple observation — obvious to those who have long been toiling for immigration-sanity, but not widely recognized by the inattentive general public — is clearly a component of the attrition-through-enforcement strategy that is currently proving itself in real life.

A raid of this size points to the complex issues involved in immigration reform efforts. The most effective reforms would be to enforce existing laws. [emphasis added]

We could lay the illegal-immigration fight to rest and start on legal immigration if the Clarion-Ledger editors' insight would — please! — just go viral among their mainstream-media colleagues. (I'm an atheist, but everyone who's not should pray for this.) Meanwhile, VDARE's Mississippi readers can submit letters-to-the-editor lauding the Clarion-Ledger crew for recognizing reality.